


Parting of the Sensory

by Lestradesexwife



Series: Prompt fills and Random Plot Bunnies. [12]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 10:51:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lestradesexwife/pseuds/Lestradesexwife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things John Watson is prepared to wait for.</p><p>There are moments when John can't remember what it was like before, when there were things to do instead of waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parting of the Sensory

It is the waiting, he knows, he does really truly know. But the waiting is what does him in every morning.

********  


Maybe today.

********  


He goes to therapy, because that is what people do. He even goes back to Ella, thinking, correctly, that Mycroft will leave him alone if he has access to his case notes. Probably it would be just as easy for Mycroft to get his notes from a new therapist. John likes Ella though, she is familiar and he knows what to say to her.

********  


He goes back to the flat to pick up some more clothes. He is floating through London, crashing on the couches of the rugby lads. Harry might actually help this time, but John can’t bear her pity. Ella showed him that, he knows that Harry means well, he just can’t accept it from her. He ends up sitting in his chair until dark, waiting.

********  


Maybe tonight.

********  


Mrs. Hudson collects him, takes him to the grave. Trying to put him back together. John knows, and he just cannot let her touch him. England might not fall without this woman, but John certainly would.

********  


The deep shadows under the trees say, “Not today.”

********  


Mycroft gives him everything of Sherlock’s. It is horrible, he doesn’t know what to do with _everything_. His mouth quirks, the bastard never needed help with the rent. John never looked at the balance when he used Sherlock’s card, just took what he needed to do the shopping and pay the bills.

********  


He waits. The sitting room is fine. He stays out as long as he can, would go out with the rugby lads every night, but they all have jobs now, schedules.

********  


All he has is waiting.

********  


Molly comes by once. They sit together on the couch, and don’t speak. When she gets up to leave she squeezes his hand and presses a small kiss against his temple. He smiles at her, and she pretends that it goes all the way to his eyes.

********  


John tries not to hate her, tells her to come back when she can. Maybe two, maybe John is not enough on his own.

********  


The ways it could happen run through his mind: bringing in the shopping, a text message, “could be dangerous”, hands shaking him awake, falling into step beside him as he walks around the park.

Not today.

********  


He waits.

********  


It is only months, it feels longer, feels like he has never done anything else. It still feels like everyone he passes on the street knows who he is, Mycroft’s surveillance, Sherlock’s homeless network, various international assassins. Normal people who look him in the face, but never say anything.

********  


John smirks, walking alone down Baker street, “People they like, people they don’t like. Friends.” paraphrasing himself. Every word of every conversation he ever had with Sherlock feels etched into his skin.

********  


And some of the words that he only heard out of the corner of his ears. “It is not a trick.” Sometimes when he is sleeping it morphs into “It was never a trick, John.” When he wakes he hears, “A magic trick, people leave notes.”

********

It makes him angry, and his anger makes him calm. He sits and digs his toes into the carpet, staring at the empty chair across from him. He starts to catalogue the flat. Finding things that do not fit in with his conception of Sherlock. The things from the cases that they worked together are easy, so he starts with them. Writing and filling notebook after notebook with details, things that Sherlock said about them, things that he knows from the case. Things that Sherlock never told him but must have researched.

********  


Once he is finished with these he moves on to the things he doesn’t know. Stares at bits of Sherlock’s life and tries to deduce what they mean about Sherlock. He discovers that Sherlock doesn’t return library books, and finds eventually that Sherlock has a rather impressive tab run up in fines. He pays it, and the library tells him to keep the books, they have already been replaced. He reads them, and it helps to pass the time.

********  


He finds there are categories: leftover bits of experiments, things from before John, and things that Sherlock must have purchased for John. His chair is the most prominent of the last category. Mrs. Hudson says that the flat was empty before Sherlock moved in, he’d been there several days before John arrived, but the last of his things arrived the night before John did. The armchair among them. Sherlock can’t have researched him, Mike is firm that he never mentioned John before that moment in Bart’s. But the chair is exactly the kind of thing John would get for himself. Used, but not shabby, comfortable and unassuming. And exactly unlike the matching furniture Sherlock chose for himself.

********  


John sits in Sherlock’s chair and even with the whole room off kilter he still knows it won’t be today.

********  


He gets up when the sky darkens, goes out to a bar. Finds a woman and brings her home, thinks maybe this will finally be what tips the balance. Afterwards she sleeps while he stares at her hair on his pillow, it is long and dark and stands out against the white of his sheets. He sleeps eventually and doesn’t terrify her with his nightmares. In the morning when she asks for his number he apologizes, makes her breakfast, she leaves after coffee. He doesn’t feel any better.

********  


Not today.

********  


He doesn’t fall apart, because he has been through worse than this. “Use your imagination.” “I don’t have to.” The waiting, he can’t have known that the waiting would be so much worse than the pain.

********  


“Don’t be dead.”

********  


John finds him, in the end. And that has never occurred to him, to hope that he might arrive as a rescuer. Because it seems that Sherlock has underestimated his opposition. He follows the directions from the text message, a familiar moan announcing its arrival.  His gun digs into his back as he watches the metre on the cab crawl ever upwards. He could have taken the tube, but the idea of being surrounded by people, the gun at this back... no, he would pay the fare. John stops himself from thinking of Eurydice, quashes any hopes he might have. Irene could be toying with him, or leading him into a trap.

********  


The door is unlocked when he arrives, and he clears the first floor slowly, checking for ambushes and booby traps as he goes. It is not Irene’s house, but it is the sort of place that she would be comfortable. The sort of place Sherlock would be used to.

********  


He’s curled on a bed when John finds him. John holds his breath until he sees the subtle shift of the bed clothes that indicate Sherlock is breathing, slower than Sherlock’s usual sleeping rate. So, drugged.

********  


John makes himself clear the rest of the second floor before he goes back to the bed, reaching for his pulse. Sinking down on the bed and closing his eyes as he feels the steady beat under his fingers.

********  


They are as safe as they can be, and John can’t bear to wake him. He positions himself so he can see the door, fingers light against Sherlock’s pulse point.

********  


He waits until the sky grows dark and the lights of London filter weakly through the curtains. Until Sherlock stirs and mumbles, “ _ **John**_?”

********  


“Welcome back, Sherlock.” His fingers slide away from Sherlock’s neck, and he waits for Sherlock’s gaze to firm, shedding the last traces of whatever drug had kept him still. “Let’s go home.”

****


End file.
